What Does it all Mean?

Photo of mushroom cloud over Nagasaki by Charles Levy

“What does it all mean?” was ubiquitous in the late night college dorm rooms of the sixties along with the sweet smells of post coital sex and marijuana. It was tantamount to the “What? Me Worry?” soubriquet underneath the face of Alfred E. Newman that characterized the so-called silent generation of fifties college students, who still sported a devil may care form of denial, despite the Cold War and the constant threat of armed warheads and nuclear armageddon.  “What Does It All Mean?” is actually a sharp turn from “What Me Worry?” and it’s indicative of the peculiar direction of the sixties sensibility which danced between the desire for transcendence and a darker nihilism occasioned by the specter of the Vietnam War. Of course both nihilism and transcendence are two sides of the same coin, predicated as they are on the avoidance of reality. And that doesn’t adequately describe an era which lead the way to important changes in our attitudes towards sexual and racial equality. CNN has been running a series on The Sixties which deals with many iconic moments which proved to be life changing for those who grew up in the era. However one might define the sixties, there's still an indubitable wistfulness about a time when a Manichean universe again became the province of developing minds. There was something almost religious about the era to the extent that it presented alternating visions of heaven and hell. You could either follow Timothy Leary’s invocation to “turn on, tune in, drop out,” or find yourself dropping napalm in the jungle. If only such antimonies were available to today's millennial traveller. Now you ask yourself why you need a drink or “trip" to have sex and feel so fearful of terrorists that you find yourself cheering the same bombing sorties that you vociferously protested against four decades earlier.

Vietnam Journal VI: Post-Marxism

General Staff in Battle of Dien Bien Phu

Marx and Freud proposed the two great analyses of economics and the mind, both of which are more interesting today for their theoretical insight than their practical applications. Post-Marxism is also a bit like post-modernism in art and literature to the extent that it provides a vast palette of ideologies one having less in common with the other than the next. Communism, where it still exists, has come a long way baby and the variety of Communism that functions in a country like Vietnam has little in common with that practiced by either of its neighbors to the north, China or North Korea, though it's plain that Vietnamese post-Marxism has more in common with that practiced by the Chinese where two very separate socio-economic systems operate at the same time, free enterprise and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In Vietnam, the disparity is even greater since a passing view gives the impression of a society in which the Communist Party functions like an employment agency filling political posts while a free market economy swaggers like an adolescent who's suddenly becoming aware of his own sexuality. Under the weight of classic Marxism, Vietnam in the post-war years was an impoverished society, but with the advent of free enterprise under the Doi Moi policy, which began in l986, the economy started to explode. Pyongyang’s subsistence economy might not be desirable, but materialism has its downside too. Nothing is ever enough.

Lives of Our Leaders: The Secret Life of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal

“Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.”—James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“As it turned out, Mr. Blumenthal never served in Vietnam, but over time, his identification with veterans of war became so strong that some of those around him … just assumed he had.” (“Vietnam Claims Grew in Time, Colleague Says,” The New York Times, May 18, 2010)   

Richard Blumenthal led a secret life, but it was nothing like that of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who patronized the Emperor’s Club VIP escort service, arranging the infamous assignation with client #9 in room 871 of Washington DC’s Mayflower Hotel. Blumenthal, a Harvard Graduate, was far more imaginative. According to what he told the Times, he didn’t use any connections to achieve his valor, he simply picked up the phone book (remember those fat objects, now relics of the Vietnam era?), found the number of the Marine Corps Reserve, and got himself shipped off to Paris Island for training. The rest, as they say, is history. Though he never actually set foot in Vietnam, the verdant, dangerous Mekong Delta unfurled itself in Blumenthal’s imagination. Khe Sanh and Danang were only a few of his destinations. Following his fancy, he parachuted into increasingly treacherous territory and immediately found himself under fire. Though he was afraid, his first thought was of saving his platoon. He came out with his AK-47 blazing, dropped some grenades, and watched with a grin as Charlie retreated. He was a legend in his own mind, saving the lives of many good men, who would return the favor by electing him Senator after he described his long, imaginary journey at VFW posts across his great state. One thing we can say about Blumenthal: he’s a real Harvard man, unlike Adam Wheeler, who weaved a far more complex tale to get away with his particular lie (“Campuses Ensnared by ‘Life of Deception,’” NYT, 5/19/10).